I had left home before dawn arriving early, just as I had done many times while I was in school so I could play football before classes began.  The sun had just cleared the horizon, casting shadows through the low hanging fog that drifted over an area that once was the most beautiful place I wanted to be.  A country high school, Dry Valley, opened so farm kids would have an opportunity to get a high school education.

As I sat in my car, overlooking the school yard,  reliving the memories of the community where I had lived my early life and where I had gone to school for five years, there was a touch of sadness in my heart.  The buildings were in the worst shape you could imagine, hardly a trace of paint anywhere, windows broken or missing.  The windmill that used to produce the best tasting cold water to quench your thirst had been turned off, no longer capturing the wind that once brought water from the depths of a deep water reservoir.

Looking over the weed covered field where I once played football and ran track, my mind drifted back seventy some years earlier to what this school had once so proudly been.

A track,  not cinder, asphalt or any of the materials used today – just good old black dirt encircled the eighty yard football field.  Just think how endearing it was to run bare footed around that track compared to the flat, perfectly measured, lined tracks of today.  With slight inclines and declines, bordered by a grove of beautiful trees on the North, a cornfield on the West, a dirt road on the South and graveled Highway 83, on the East.  Within that quarter mile track there were two school buildings,  a windmill and cistern, a merry-go-around, a swing set and two out houses. Yesterdays kids gave their all while running around that track, as their time was probably measured on the best timing devise available to our proud community – a dollar watch that might or might not have a second hand.

Probably the greatest exposure to the real press occurred in 1941 when the Omaha World Herald gave Dry Valley High School full page coverage, in color.  A school obviously ahead of it’s time.  How many football players can you recall, at any level, in the ‘30’s, having face masks?  Some of the players had them on their helmets at Dry Valley.  They were not available for purchase from any athletic equipment supplier, they were made right in the manual training classroom in the basement of Dry Valley High.  The face mask penalty that we are all familiar with today, was not in the rules book.

Without pay and volunteering her time, Mrs. Ted Forsyth, always in a beautiful dress, drove from Broken Bow each day to serve as the coach of these young boys.  Dry Valley was vying for the Little Six conference championship in six man football and they needed all the help they could get.  The game would be timed by a dollar watch.

Basketball was played on an outdoor court with boundaries laid out and lined with lime once a year.  Usually after one scrimmage the free throw line was no longer visible and that distance was usually determined by six to eight steps from the goal, depending on the size of the kid, then a drag of the heel parallel to the backboard, served as the “exact” spot from where you would attempt to make that free throw.  In colder weather, when the ball would hardly bounce, we played in the haymow of a large barn.  Games were actually scheduled there, with spectators standing on heated bricks to keep their feet warm and of course the games were timed with the precision of the faithful dollar watch.

All of the memories are not in athletics.  More importantly this was a good school academically, with poorly paid but dedicated teachers who prepared their students well.  A very high percentage of the students excelled in their businesses, professions or just in life after graduation.  With limited resources the members of that community gave their children a gift, that I am sure, was never properly acknowledged but appreciated more than anyone could imagine.

Dry Valley High School opened in 1922 and closed in 1945.  In the fall of 1944, I was the last and only freshman enrolled.